Filling the Lacuna

I never get tired of re-posting Walter Benjamin's tips for writing. It's most likely because I have the hardest time in the world sticking to them.

I. Anyone intending to embark on a major work should be lenient with himself and, having completed a stint, deny himself nothing that will not prejudice the next.

II. Talk about what you have written, by all means, but do not read from it while the work is in progress. Every gratification procured this way will slacken your tempo. If this regime is followed the growing desire to communicate will become in the end, the motor for completion.

III. In your working conditions avoid everyday mediocrity. Semi-relaxation to a background of insipid sounds, is degrading. On the other hand, accompaniment by an etude or a cacophony of voices can become as significant for your work as the perceptible silence of the night. If the latter sharpens the inner ear, the former acts as a touchstone for a diction ample enough to bury even the most wayward sounds.

IV. Avoid haphazard writing materials. A pedantic adherence to papers, pens, inks is beneficial. No luxury, but an abundance of these materials is indispensable.

V. Let no thought pass incognito, and keep your notebook as strictly as the authorities keep their register of aliens.

VI. Keep your pen aloof from inspiration, which it will then attract with magnetic power. The more circumspectly you delay writing down an idea, the more maturely develoepd it will be on surrendering itself. Speech conquers thought but writing commands it.

VII. Never stop writing because you have run out of ideas. Literary honour requires that one break off only at an appointed moment (a mealtime, a meeting) or at the end of a work.

VIII. Fill the lacunae of inspiration by tidily copying out what is already written. Intuition will awaken in the process.

IX. Nulla dies sine linea -- but there may well be weeks.

X. Consider no work perfect over which you have not once sat from evening to broad daylight.

XI. Do not write the conclusion of your work in a familiar study. You would not find the necessary courage there.

XII. Stages of composition: idea -- style -- writing. The value of the fair copy is that in producing it you confine attention to calligraphy. The idea kills of inspiration, style fetters the idea, writing pays off style.

XIII. The work is the death mask of its conception.